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“A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

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Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#141

Post by 13thLetter »

obstinate wrote: post #114
k_brother wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you provide citations for those posts? This is the first I have heard of either Curtis or Moldbug, and I'm having trouble seeing the connection you're drawing. However, it seems to be the consensus. [edit: I see that there are secondary sources — but I'm curious about a primary source. Shouldn't that be the most important?]

Google is helpful here. There are plenty of articles that have been written about him (speaking as someone else who hadn't heard of him until today). This is the one I'm reading right now: http://www.thebaffler.com/blog/mouthbreathing-machiavellis/

Why read an article _about_ him, as opposed to reading what he actually said? Are you concerned about contracting wrongthink?

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#142

Post by 13thLetter »

muglug wrote: post #110
Afforess wrote: post #34

What outcomes do actions like this encourage? Well, it encourages controversial writers to stay in the shadows, hide their real identities, lest the vigilante mobs find them. This outcome also encourages people in general to say less, creates an atmosphere of self-censorship, and so harms our free society. Whatever happened to "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say i…

> Whatever happened to "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."? I'll defend his right to say it, and I'll also defend a conference organiser's right to deny politically-outspoken developers a chance to talk about their (nevertheless interesting) projects.

Nobody on the entire planet is saying that Strangeloop doesn't have the right to kick people out because they don't like their political views, so please put that argument back in the drawer.

What everyone here is saying is that their actions are _wrong_, not illegal. By balkanizing people based on unrelated politics, their actions are destructive to the advancement of technology and fly in the face of the spirit of free speech. Do you not agree?

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#143

Post by tptacek »

Isn't Urbit named for the Mencius Moldbug blog, whose writer repeatedly refers to same as "UR"?

How distinct is Urbit and Yarvin from the advocacy of the Moldbug UR blog?

The association between Yarvin and that blog isn't exactly cryptic; for instance, Yarvin has given somewhat recent video-recorded talks espousing many of the same ideas as the blog, purposefully and in some depth.

Is it possible that the most boring interpretation of facts is once again correct? That Urbit itself is a relatively obscure project with very few users and was accepted to Strange Loop as a sort of, "huh, interesting" kind of thing, by a panel not fully acquainted with "Moldbug"? And that once they were more fully informed of what Yarvin stands for, the costs of giving him a stage outweighed the benefits?

Talk proposals aren't binary things. Program committees weigh pros and cons for most submissions. Some of them are so clearly important that they'd get in no matter how outre' their authors politics are. But it seems like it'd take some retconning to suggest that Urbit is that kind of subject.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#144

Post by to3m »

twoodfin wrote: post #61

As of 12:30pm EDT, this has been flagged down to #111. Some people really don't want to discuss this.

Think of it as you might a ban on discussing religion and/or politics when dining with people you don't know especially well. Less an attack on MAH FREEDMS, more a simple means of keeping the peace. You may complain that this will give rise to nothing but an echo chamber - and that's possibly true, but I fail to see how it's any worse than the alternative ;)

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#145

Post by 13thLetter »

irickt wrote: post #57
ncallaway wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it hands veto power to whoever determines what racism is and when something is 'too racist' This sounds like the function of the free marketplace of ideas. One is allowed to espouse any ideology that you wish. However, other people are allowed to respond with their own speech. They can call the idea racist if they want. They can take away speaking platforms if they want. Whether a statement is "racist" is a determi…

Yes, and the rejected author can't very well complain because, whether or not his views are "racist", he clearly imagines a society where many people are excluded because of their views. Any group almost by definition has the right to define policies and police its membership, for any cause (including irrational). No group owes you the right of membership.

Nobody is saying otherwise. Please put that argument away. What everyone here is saying is that the policies and policing they are carrying out is _wrong_.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#146

Post by steveklabnik »

tptacek wrote: post #143

Isn't Urbit named for the Mencius Moldbug blog, whose writer repeatedly refers to same as "UR"? How distinct is Urbit and Yarvin from the advocacy of the Moldbug UR blog? The association between Yarvin and that blog isn't exactly cryptic; for instance, Yarvin has given somewhat recent video-recorded talks espousing many of the same ideas as the blog, purposefully and in some depth. Is it possible that the most boring…

I have at least attempted to be _very_ clear that I do not begrudge the organizers of this conference for exactly the reason that you say. Your 'boring interpretation' lines up with my understanding of the situation.

As has been said many times in this thread, Yarvin is free to say what he believes, and I am free to say what I believe, and organizers are allowed to do what they want. This is how a free market of ideas is supposed to work.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#147

Post by djur »

PopeOfNope wrote: post #85
shalmanese wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of person stereotypes an entire state of 40 million people based on their experiences in one small town?

The kind that uses logic and reason instead of rhetorical appeals to emotion. The 'personal is the political' is part of the culture in california and is common throughout the state. And if you don't believe me, you should go on a job hunt and tell every interviewer who talks to you that you're a republican. Now that I think about it, I want to do just that and document the results. Should be interesting.

Interviewers are generally not allowed to ask you about your political positions or take them into account in any way. Frankly, talking about one's politics at an interview for an apolitical position would be so inappropriate as to reasonably raise concerns about the interviewee's impulse control and judgment.

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#148

Post by twoodfin »

dang wrote: post #96
jpt4 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To indulge in a bit of tinfoil-hatting re "some people just wanted to silence it": Tlon, Corp., the Red Hat to Urbit's Fedora, rejected Y-Combinator funding last year.

If you're implying that we'd censor an HN post because of some arcane YC-related detail, that's false. None of the people who work on HN have any knowledge of what you're referring to. We haven't the cycles to keep track of such things even if we wanted to—our hands are rather full—and they'd play no role in HN moderation if we did. The post in question was downweighted by user flags. The only thing we did was unkill…

Thanks for unkilling it. The most fascinating part of this issue to me remains how "uninterested" HN is in discussing it (insofar as the mechanics of HN allow us to collectively express interest).

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#149

Post by jsprogrammer »

overgard wrote: post #108
PopeOfNope wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever happened to "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it."? Marxism happened. Limiting speech has always been a tactic employed by the political left. Words like "racist", "sexist" and "homophobe" were designed to shut down free speech. It's extremely effective at silencing any opposition.

You're getting unfairly downvoted, but you're right: whether you agree with their ideas or not, the main tactic of the left is to police what topics are "appropriate" and marginalize those who are "inappropriate" with a label. I'm mostly apolitical so I'm not particularly outraged by this, but I wish they'd just own what they do. If they really think their ideas stand up, they should be welcoming opposition rather th…

Just curious why you say that is the "main tactic of the left"?

Re: “A Statement with My View on Curtis Yarvin and Strange Loop”

#150

Post by devalier »

sagichmal wrote: post #117
Afforess wrote: post #34

What outcomes do actions like this encourage? Well, it encourages controversial writers to stay in the shadows, hide their real identities, lest the vigilante mobs find them. This outcome also encourages people in general to say less, creates an atmosphere of self-censorship, and so harms our free society. Whatever happened to "I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say i…

> actions like this encourage . . . controversial writers > to stay in the shadows, hide their real identities, lest > the vigilante mobs find them. Racist writers can stay well in the shadows; their human persons can suffer the consequences of their detestable opinions. Both of these are moral and just outcomes. Societies need not, indeed must not sacrifice forward progress on the altar of freedom of expression for…

If we can not make moral decisions as a society, to say "the opinion that minority races are inferior is not one we are willing to tolerate," we stand no chance to have any meaningful cultural progression.

Can you suspend disbelief for a moment?

Imagine, hypothetically, that in the world we live in, the one standard deviation difference in IQ between certain races was in fact primarily due to statistical differences in gene frequency.

Would it still be morally unacceptable to point this out? Would it still be counter to progress to point this out? If you still think it would be immoral, how can you progress if you misdiagnose reality? I mean if you want to solve the problem, you have to know what causes it. If environment causes the problem, then environmental changes can fix it. If genes cause the problem, then we might have the technology in a few decades that allows parents to level-up their children. In the mean time, if genes are the issue, then universal basic income would be a lot better for disadvantaged then spending money on the school bureaucracy. So if you want to help people, you need to have a truthful view of the problem.

Follow-up question. If would be OK to hold the genetic view in world where the genetic hypothesis was actually true, how are we to know which world we actually live in, if people are not allowed to make good faith cases of the evidence and analysis for both viewpoints, without fear of ostracism and career suicide?

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